Five Basic Buying Decisions: Before the prospect buys he has to be helped to take five steps, decisions
He has to admit a need for something.
He agrees the product will fill the need.
He feels the salesman is the proper source.
He believes the price is fair.
He realizes now is the time to buy.
Make Your Prospect Dissatisfied
It is now plain that the first selling job to be done, once you are facing your prospect and have centered his interest on you and your message, is to create dissatisfaction. This is the goal of much of our national advertising. It shows people new things for better living. It pictures sleeker-looking cars, appliances for the kitchen that allow greater savings in time and labor, more comfortable chairs and beds, faster transportation, more fascinating travel, better TV.
In most of the slick magazines notice how these advertisements tie in with articles on vacation spots, with news about personalities in the movies and on TV, with stories which portray people having romantic experiences, living in smart surroundings, driving low, sleek cars, wearing beautiful clothes, smoking king-sized cigarettes, drinking fresh pineapple juice, sunning on the beach.
The whole theme is to make people dissatisfied with humdrum surroundings, tedious and time- consuming tasks, drab existences. The job of modern advertising is to make the consumer feel fed-up with old cars, with furnaces that don’t adequately heat homes, with houses that lack insulation and get too hot in summer and too cold in winter. Is your present lighting inadequate?
Does your insurance fad to provide a way to educate your two boys, to assure their finishing college? Are you getting no where on your job? Is your TV set hard to tune?
Are beetles eating up your roses? Has your dog canine halitosis? Then, turn to our product—it will solve your problem. That’s the American advertising pattern.
In selling the Hotpoint Electra sink, dissatisfaction is created by mentioning that most housewives spend at least forty- five minutes daily washing dishes.
To drive home the advantages she is thus missing, the Hotpoint salesman pictures ways the housewife may use the time she saves—more time after dinner with her husband and children, longer evenings for recreation, more time for gardening or other hobbies, more opportunity to see her friends, more time to crochet or knit or sew, more hours to play with the children, more time for shopping, an opportunity to get in a little rest or reading each day while (and note the unfavorable contrast) other women are standing at their sinks washing dishes
A prospect who is satisfied with an existing condition will not buy from you unless you can convince him that he will be better off after his purchase. To illustrate, let us assume that you are driving a car which is four years old. The speedometer shows 55,000 miles. The car has never given you any serious trouble, for you have taken care of it. You are pleased that you selected such a good car. You feel you don’t need a new car. You are satisfied.
Let’s assume that the salesman from whom you originally bought the car calls to interest you in a new model. You tell him you are definitely not interested and you tell him why. He might say,
We all have enough troubles without going out of our way to look for them. The only reason I mentioned it was that Tom Jacobs, who has the same model you have, had a very bad smashup the other day at the triangle. The tie-rod connection on the steering mechanism had worn and it just fell apart. Tom lost control of the car and crashed into the guardrail on the other side of the road. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed, because he just missed a head-on collision with a milk truck.
“When a car reaches the age of yours,” the salesman continues, “and has the mileage yours has, it’s a good idea to keep a pretty close check on the vital parts. If you don’t, you never can tell when your transmission may fail or something else equally serious happen which may cause inconvenience, expense, or even serious injury to yourself or your family.
I only mention these things because you ought to bring your car in for a complete checkup for your own protection. By the way, have you driven this year’s model? Mine is outside. Let me show its new power steering.”
You were accustomed to driving an old car which you thought was pretty good. Now behind the wheel of the latest model, you are sure to recognize advantages such as easier parking, power steering.
Create Desire for a Change
Creative selling may, therefore, be described as the type of selling which brings about a desire for change where contentment has previously existed. It is of vital importance that you understand this essential fact of creative selling before taking up a study of the structure of presentation.
Your plan for any sale depends to a large extent on the mental attitude existing in your prospect’s mind at the opening of the presentation. If the prospect’s dissatistion is complete, it is not necessary for the salesman to make any presentation. If you go into a store to buy some shirts for yourself, you do so either because you are dissatisfied with the number of shirts you have or with their condition, color, size, or style.
If you specify you want a size 5—33 white broadcloth shirt at $3.50 quality, the clerk has an easy order—if he has such a shirt in stock. He doesn’t need to make much of a presentation. If he wanted to sell you a blue pin stripe at $5, he’d have to make a presentation that would cause you to become dissatisfied with your first decision to buy a white one.
His creation of desire coupled with a willingness to change which impels people to buy. Many prospects may be wholly unaware of the conditions which would make your product desirable to them. It is your job to bring such conditions to their attention. Your success as a salesman depends on how well you do this and how convincingly you put before them the reasons why your product will relieve their dissatisfaction.
Your primary job in selling resembles advertising. It aims to heighten your prospect’s dissatisfaction with his present position in relation to your product. If you are selling a new oil burner and your prospect already has an anthracite stoker, you call attention to the economy of the oil burner. If he is still hand-firing his furnace with soft coal and carrying out ashes on Tuesdays, you present the convenience of oil heating. But you first have to make your prospect discontented with the cost of his anthracite stoker or the messiness of shoveling coal and ashes before you get him to admit his need, get him to say to himself, “I now feel my present position could be improved.”
The Product Advantages
In preparing your sales talk, you have already worked out the main advantages of your product and tied them in with buying motives. In carrying the prospect through the next step, his decision on the product, you are seeking to find out and emphasize the advantages which will let him see himself with one less problem once he buys your product. He must picture himself in a more desirable situation.
Suppose you are a car salesman. You have previously qualified your prospect, learning something about his driving habits, his car interests, and his ability to buy. As soon as possible, you verify the pertinent data which you feel may tie together his car interests and your car. For instance, your investigation showed that your prospect is now driving a car that is three years old.
Your informant stated he usually trades in his car every three years. You then verify this by asking your prospect, “You usually trade in your car about every three years, don’t you, Mr. Watson
Or, if your product is the oil burner, you can ask, ‘You have had your present coal furnace almost twenty years, haven’t you?’ Always ask a specific question, so that if you’re original data are wrong, your prospect sets you straight. Then, in the case of the oil burner, extend your check of existing conditions: “And you hand-fire your furnace, don’t you?”
Checking the original qualifying data has two advantages: I) your questions heighten the prospect’s need and increase his desire for change; and 2) the prospect’s answers and incidental remarks give you a clue to which advantages of your product will appeal to him most strongly.
Back Up Your Claims
Once you have appraised the situation and made the prospect dissatisfied, you must persuade him that your product or service is the answer to his dissatisfaction. And so you make an appeal to his emotional buying motives. You suggest the comfort, the economy he can enjoy with your product. For instance, you point out that a stoker removes the unpleasant tasks of shoveling coal and carrying out ashes.
Or, if your product is insulation, that it permits your prospect to sleep in a comfortable bedroom during the summer or that a new Studebaker car reduces the cost of gasoline and oil.
While suggestion does much of your selling, at the same time you also appeal to reason to engage the buyer’s conscious mind. You back up your claim for your product’s advantages with proof. You need these proofs to establish you as an authority. Your prospect has listened to other claims. Talk is cheap. The high- pressure salesman makes claims that he doesn’t back up. The only way to overcome the reasoning doubts of the prospect is to offer proof.
The Nature of Proof
Now proof may take different forms. Your company probably supplies you with various data which you select and use. Your company engineers may have built experimental houses and tested the effect of your insulation inside wooden, stucco, and brick walls.
These research specialists probably measured the heat loss and heat penetration under various outdoor and indoor temperatures. As a result of their findings, the company may warrant a saving of at least eighteen per cent in fuel if X-Cel glass wool is installed according to company specifications.
Many companies run tests on their products, and their findings afford the salesmen proof which he can present to the prospect. The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval may be offered as evidence of quality, as welt as the result of studies conducted by other independent laboratories.
Large department stores (Macy’s is one), and large retail chains like Penney’s, have their own testing laboratories, where specialists determine such factors as durability, color fastness, shrinkage of materials, or strength by subjecting the products to misuse to simulate wear and tear.
Magazines conduct customer preference studies, and various consumer research groups publish their findings on popular brands of soap, toothpaste, razor blades, gasoline, and even automobiles.
Company proof may also include detailed reports on the actual experience of customers with X-Cel glass wool. In some instances, statements have been sworn to. Pictures in your kit show the man and his family enjoying the added comfort of their insulated home. Illustrations of people using a product add emotional appeal to the factual data.
Each salesman in time develops a list of satisfied customers. He may have sold X-Cel glass wool for an apartment project. With the cooperation of the superintendent, he can arrange for prospects to view the sample rooms and see for themselves how cool they are in summer months, or how comfortable in winter.
Proofs from satisfied local customers are convincing and the creative salesman uses them effectively to build conviction.
Use Endorsement Letters
Finally, the creative salesman has in his portfolio letters from satisfied users. Such letters are commonly known as endorsements.
While many people discount the praise a professional athlete gives to a certain brand of cigarettes, or the complimentary things an actress may say about anything from toilet soap to a home permanent obviously for a price, these endorsements do influence opinion because they appeal to a universal urge to imitate the leaders.
The testimonials of local citizens, especially when they are backed up by before and after pictures, are more believable, though of course less glamorous. If the Thomas’s have had that much satisfaction out of their oil burner, it appears likely that the prospect and his wife would also enjoy owning one.
But of all the various means of proof, none compares in effectiveness to the demonstration. That is why the car salesman suggests, “Just crawl in behind the wheel and drive this car.”
Performance is the real test. A well- conducted demonstration will show the prospect what the product can do for him, better than words. Let’s see why.
People Want What They See
Tourists who visit Northeastern Pennsylvania see the culm dumps, or waste, of the anthracite mines. But in this area there is an unusual pit formed by glacial action. But since the glacial pothole is difficult to locate, few tourists visit it. Postcards showing the glacial pit are displayed on racks in the stores and gift shops.
But the pictures of the culm piles outsell pictures of the glacial pothole fifty to one. The lesson here is that tourists buy pictures of what they have seen. Every salesman should remember this fact and apply it in selling—that it is only natural for people to want what they have seen.
Why the Demonstration?
Your demonstration must show how your product will overcome the specific weaknesses, limitations, or needs for improvement in the way the customer is now doing something. The demonstration clinches the second buying decision that the product will fit the need.
Keeping in mind the information you have uncovered about the prospect’s need, you demonstrate specific benefits that come from using your equipment. This is your demonstration goal; your goal is not a general demonstration of all the advantages.
You should slant the demonstration to secure conviction on those points which the customer has admitted are weaknesses, shortcomings, or unfulfilled needs in his present product or service.
A general demonstration is like the scattered spray of a shotgun. You can only hope that somewhere in the demonstration you touch on buying motives which will convince the prospect. But the demonstration of specific benefits is like a rifle bullet fired right into the bull’s-eye the spot where your prospect is vulnerable because of his dissatisfaction with his product to demonstrate specific benefits; most creative salesmen list the major limitations of their prospect’s situation.
And then they show step by step how their product will wipe out these limitations. In this method of selling by the demonstration, conviction is obtained through comparison. The present inadequacy of the prospect’s situation is held up and compared to what his experience will be with an improved product or service.
As each point is demonstrated, the salesman mentally crosses it off his list by checking with the prospect; “I believe you will agree that this Simplicity garden tractor takes the backbreaking labor out of keeping your garden free of weeds, won’t you? “
Use More Than Words
Buyers are likely to listen with indifference to what the salesman says. The average man remembers only one-tenth of the ideas that come through the ear. He soon forgets the rest.
Although he remembers only one-tenth of what he hears, he remembers three-tenths of what he sees, and one-half of what he both hears and sees. Other sense impressions, those of taste, touch, and smell, further deepen the impression of a demonstration.
The eye is the fastest of the five sensory perceptions in registering new impressions. With the help of pictures or observation, the individual is able in a few seconds to grasp information which would take minutes to explain.
‘When the salesman has props he should use them. When the National Cash Register salesman says, “Now we will list these five items,” he does that. And he has five items. When he says,
“We now put a dollar sixty-five in the cash drawer,” he uses money and puts $1.65 into the cash drawer.
The creative salesman knows that words do not suggest the same thing to different people. During the war it became necessary to train a lot of inexperienced workers to perform exact machine tool and assembly operations in making munitions, tanks, ships, and planes.
Training experts worked out what became known as job instruction training. It was based on the idea that to train a man you both tell and show him the steps of the job.
In preparing foremen to apply this idea, the trainer first told the group how to tie a knot electrician’s use in wiring appliances.
After the trainer described how an underwriter’s knot is tied, he handed a double strand of cord to a member of the group, asking the trainee to tie the knot. In thousands of such training groups, no case was reported where, entirely from hearing the process described, a trainee was able to tie the knot.
Next the trainer showed the group how to tie the knot, step by step. After this demonstration, various members were called up to tie the knot. Still they were unable to do more than the first few steps from merely watching it done,
Finally, a member of the group was called up, and standing beside the trainer, he observed the knot being tied. At the same time the trainer explained each step as he proceeded, stressing key points.
In contrast to previous failures, no instance is on record of a foreman who, after being both told and shown how to tie the knot, failed to do so on the first attempt.
This story contains a valuable lesson for the salesman. It indicates that the best way to convince the prospect of the advantages of the product is to demonstrate the product in action and at the same time explain the advantages. What is equally important is to let the prospect take part in the demonstration, experiencing the advantages through his five senses.